Trial Balance: The Collected Short Stories of William March

by William March

Collects the Alabama writer's short stories, including "The Little Wife," "Mist on the Meadow," "Happy Jack," "Personal Letter," "The Funeral," and "Dirty Emma"

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

506 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 2011

About the author

William March (born William Edward Campbell) was an American author and a highly decorated US Marine. The author of six novels and four short-story collections, March was a critical success and heralded as "the unrecognized genius of our time", without attaining popular appeal until after his death. His novels intertwine his own personal torment with the conflicts spawned by unresolved class, family, sexual, and racial matters. March often presents characters who, through no fault of their own, are victims of chance, and writes that freedom can only be obtained by being true to one's nature and humanity.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Southern writer William March is, today, best remembered for his chilling novel of a young female serial killer, 'The Bad Seed' (which I've read and am about to read again soon). Published in 1954, it was March's final work - he passed away at age 60, five weeks after the book's publication - and, though it quickly became a phenomenal success, March considered it the least of his accomplishments. 

Previously, he had published five other novels and four short-story collections but it now appears that none of his pre-'TBS' work (including his 'All Quiet on the Western Front'-esque 'Company K' - filmed in 2004) is much spoken of. 

To say the very least, that is a complete shame. If this marvelous short story collection is any justification (and it seems to me a significant one), anyone who is a fan of 'TBS' owes it to him / herself to track down March's earlier work. (Existing copies of 'Trial Balance' can be a bit pricey though you might get lucky. My university library came to the rescue.)

What lies in wait for the unsuspecting reader is two-or-even-three-or-morefold. 

It will be discovered that, the considerable shock value of 'TBS' notwithstanding, March was not at heart a suspense or horror writer. 'TBS' is an anomaly in that regard. What he was, however, was an exemplar of psychological fiction. 

Throughout the 55 stories in this collection (several of them O. Henry Prize-winning or collected in Houghton Mifflin's 'Best American Short Stories' series), the author displays an unerring ability in capturing recognizable and relatable human frailty and complexity. More often than not, he manages this with a deceptively homespun directness often dipped in mordant humor. There's a coziness in March's writing that can be simultaneously cutting. 

For lovers of fine, down-home prose - say, something along the lines of Harper Lee - 'Trial Balance' can be well-worth the scavenger hunt to locate it.

Intermittently, March appears to reveal himself obliquely, as in the story 'Not Very - Subtle', through the voice of Hazel:

"I guess I got too much imagination and I'm too innerested in people and what goes on for my own good. Mamma is always saying, 'Hazel, your imagination and the way you're innerested in people and what goes on is going to be your ruin yet. I never saw a girl with so much imagination,' she says. 'You ought to be a writer and make money out of it.'"

That's exactly what March did. As exhibited in his stories, the author's unbridled imagination seemed to know no bounds - its breadth is actually astonishing - and he apparently made a nice-enough living at using it; enough to be comfortable. 

There's no faulting his ease with character description, as in 'The Yellow Fields':

They were much alike in appearance, both of them being bony, solidly built women who seemed capable of turning even the heaviest mattress with one quick, efficient flip of their wrists.

Occasionally in this volume, you will come across a moment - as in 'The Borax Bottle' - that will foreshadow the macabre quality found in 'TBS':

"It's quite a gruesome little story; perhaps you'd like to hear it, Clark. It has its amusing side, too. There's an element of pure terror in it, and it has always seemed to me that terror is the basis of all true comedy."

As well - though it's but a single instance in the compilation - there's a bit of insight into the closeted homosexuality that lies under the surface of 'TBS'. In 'Mr. Edwards' Black Eye', the titular character relates how he got his eye blackened when he visited a 'bohemian' Greenwich Village club and tried to cut in on two women dancing.:

"Mr. Shaddock, that other girl was big and sort of rangy, and she didn't take any pride at all in her appearance. She had a bartender haircut, and she wore a man's coat. When she walked, she swaggered like she owned the place."

What Edwards fails to realize is that the women - one of them named 'Tommy' - are gay. 

If I singled out more of the outstanding stories assembled, this review would be quite longer than it already is. (I'll say that three particular faves are 'A Shop in St. Louis, Missouri', 'Geraldette' and 'The Female of the Fruit Fly'.) Short story collections are notoriously uneven - how many times have you read a review stating that about half of a volume is good stuff, while the other half is under-par? That is far from the case with 'Trial Balance'. I can think of maybe two times here that I felt a story was slightly less than fully realized. For the dominant part, these are expertly crafted, traditional - by that I mean *genuine*- short stories, each lasting mere pages (a few are a single page); more or less running the gamut of the human condition. 

I'd certainly call 'Trial Balance' a find - by all means, discover it for yourself!

[Merl Fluin · Rating 3 out of 5]

42 SHORT STORIES IN 42 DAYS*

DAY 36: A Sum In Addition
Three hotel guests find a document discarded by a previous visitor, and their reactions to its content reveal their characters.

*The rules:
– Read one short story a day, every day for six weeks
– Read no more than one story by the same author within any 14-day period
– Deliberately include authors I wouldn't usually read
– Review each story in one sentence or less